“We have legislation in place, these are crimes, they should be dealt with.”

Ms Criado-Perez campaigned for a woman to be put on one of the stirling bank notes after Elizabeth Fry was replaced by Winston Churchill on the five pound note.

Eventually, the Bank of England announced that Jane Austen would be put on the ten pound note from 2017.

But her success was greeted by a deluge of abuse last week.

She said she was getting an abusive message “every minute” making it impossible to report the abuse via an online form, the only complaint service Twitter currently provides.

She said Twitter should introduce a “report button” so that trolls can be immediately identified and dealt with.

A petition had on Sunday afternoon gained almost 40,000 signatures supporting the idea.

A number of celebrities and politicians have suggested a boycott of Twitter unless action is taken.

But so far Twitter has failed to act and no action has been taken by police.

Ms Criado-Perez said the issue was preventing women speaking out in public spaces because of fear of abuse.

She pointed out that blocking abusers does not work, as they can merely set up another account and continue "trolling".

“These men want me off Twitter to silence me and I am not going to give them the satisfaction," she added.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said Twitter must take action.

She has written to Tony Wang, the general manager of Twitter in the UK, asking why there was such a dealy in responding to the "disgraceful, appalling and unacceptable" comments made about Ms Criado Perez on the site.

She wrote: "Despite the scale and seriousness of these threats, the official response from Twitter continues to be extremely weak - simply directing Caroline away from Twitter towards the police, and, belatedly, directing users to abuse reporting forms on Twitter.

"Of course it is right to report such abuse to the police, and it is very important that they investigate and pursue this case.

"But social media platforms also have a responsibility for the platform they give users. And in particular they have a responsibility not to tolerate this kind of abuse, rape threats and potentially criminal behaviour."

She added: "The response by Twitter has clearly been inadequate and fails not only Caroline, but many more women and girls who have faced similar abuse on your social network.

"I urge you to go further and ensure that Twitter carries out a full review of all its policies on abusive behaviour, threats and crimes, including more help for Twitter users who experience abuse, a clear complaints process and clear action from Twitter to tackle this kind of persecution."

Mr Wang said that the company takes online abuse seriously.

He tweeted: "We encourage users to report an account for violation of the Twitter rules by using one of our report form

"Also, we're testing ways to simplify reporting, e.g. within a Tweet by using the "Report Tweet" button in our iPhone app and on mobile web.

"We will suspend accounts that, once reported to us, are found to be in breach of our rules."